Hussong Ford

This 6-1/2" x 4-1/2" black and white photograph is a corner view of a two story brick building with windows on each floor. There are Ford signs on the roof and also the first floor windows, two F.R. Hussong Sales & Service signs and canopies above the second floor windows. The building stands at the intersection of two brick streets, with a street car track running down the middle of one of them. A mailbox, a garbage can, and a street light stand on the sidewalk in front of the building. Some houses are visible behind the brick building. "Hussong-Rogers Inc." is written on the photograph.

In 1917-18, Lincoln physician George O. W. Farnham invested an estimated $30,000 to build a 100'x142' automotive building at 1800 O Street, shown in this image. He spent the same amount in 1922 to double the size of the building, extending eastward (right, beyond the edge of this photo). Ellery Davis was his architect, designing the first part as one of his solo projects after dissolving his partnership with George Berlinghof, and the second half soon after beginning his long, productive partnership with Walter Wilson. The building first housed F. Ray Hussong's Ford dealership. Hussong's lengthy entry in the 1928 Who's Who of Lincoln listed him as a "merchant and connoisseur" mentioning he was born in Iowa in 1870 "during a raging blizzard, the snow being drifted eight feet deep;" that his mother's ancestors included "an old Saxon nobleman, Cedrick Bullman, who supplied beef for the table of Alford the Great, King of Wessex (871-901);" and that he had worked for various Lincoln retailers before beginning his Ford dealership in 1916. DuTeau Chevrolet occupied the structure from the 1930s to the 1980s.